here are some quick excerpts of the last few eggposts i sent out.

***************

the best Xmas gift I have ever gotted
by Andrew
-------------------------------------

You know, with me, the bottom line in life is comprised of three things: truth, love and getting down.

Now, I'm not saying that I work all of these things into every single thing I do. I've been known to tell the occasional fib, I sometimes do not let the love flow as the love really should flow, and yes, I cannot honestly claim to get down each and every day. No, actually, that's untrue, I do get down every single day, but I don't always get down for the ENTIRE day. What's more, sometimes when I get down, I am not getting down in the funkiest way. I'm not proud of this but I admit it. Yes brothers, I have faked the funk and my nose has grown. They call me Sir Nose D'.. Okay anyway I'll shut up.

So what I'm saying is that last year a good friend and my former tag team partner (before he turned evil of course, I think we all remember that whole debacle) got me the best gift ever: It was a shirt that said "Heaven don't want me and Hell's afraid I'll take over", except he had added some words in marker that really put the shirt over the top. The shirt as I got it said "Heaven don't want me CAUSE I AIN'T DEAD YET! and Hell's afraid I'll take over JUST AS SOON AS I'M DEAD, WHICH I AIN'T". This gift was well chosen for me due to it being honest (actually, maybe accurate is a better word) and filled with love (not to mention 105 pounds of the freshest, whitest pork this nation has to offer when I tried it on). My god I miss El Reverendo and his awesome gifts.

************************************

I read some thing a while ago about these people who have email-based sports leagues. I can't remember if it's only wrestling, but I know wrestling is a big one. A bunch of people will get together on a mailing list and they'll all make characters for themselves and then play out scenarios. It actually fascinates me a little, which is kind of odd because when I think about it I guess in theory these leagues are the same as role-playing/creative anachronism games stuff, which doesn't really fascinate me as much. Unless your definition of fascinate is "makes me laugh, in a mean way, because I am mean". In that case yeah, anything involving the phrases "golem" or "chaotic evil elf" fascinates me a lot. But anyway I am off topic here!

My point is, does anyone want to start a league like this with me? Except not wrestling. I'd like to form a virtual cock-fighting email game. The way I'm figuring it everyone would group themselves in teams of two and then all start sending messages to the list at once until a clear winner emerged. The team would be split into one rooster and one sleazy cock-fighting guy who owns the rooster.

I think the fun part would be coming up with the characters. Sure it's easy to come up with a good concept for a guy who is into cock-fighting (fat, bearded, possibly australian or german), but the part that would really be the best would be coming up with the rooster's character. I think the relation between the rooster and the sleazy cock-fighting guy would be like the relationship between a wrestler and his manager actually. I guess the whole thing would be a lot like wrestling, except with roosters. Each rooster would have a special finishing move and a cool costume and some sort of gimmicky personality. There would be grudges and all that stuff too, so like the russian rooster would have this animosity thing going with the american rooster, and there'd be certain roosters that were partly there for comic relief, like the wacky southern-hick rooster who would wear overalls and a straw hat. I think if I was a rooster I'd be the oil-baron rooster from some generic middle-eastern country who baited the crowd by threatening to raise oil prices, it's timely and I think it'd make for some truly compelling virtual cock-fighting.

Okay, not to be really into myself here, but this is genius. Sometimes I just astound myself with how awesome I am. Mark my words, a year from now virtual cock-fighting is going to be all over. It will have replaced Ebay as the standard internet reference on TV shows and for comedians and you won't be able to pick up a magazine without some article on it. You just watch. I am the greatest genius the world has ever known eh? I know, I am.

********************************

Apart from that not much is new with me, I'm just spending the winter working on my book 'the Bitchslap Imperative' and body-rockin'. Most people who know me know that I am way way into the body-rockin' but you may not know that I like to body-rock it in the winter months too. Well I do. Like to body-rock in the winter months that is.

********************************

It seems that everyone has a longwinded and boring story of when they started using the internet and I'm no different. I'd like to share with you some memories of mine, I hope you enjoy.

My story about internet
by Andrew

Oh those were heady days they were! It was the summer of 1995 and the world was just waking up to the promise of the internet. This was before the hype and back then the Internet was relegated to the odd cover story in Time and Newsweek here and there.

My parents bought a computer at the local Walmart and hooked it up it in the basement of our house. They bought it mostly so my parents could use it for word processing. At the time dad had written several (award winning I should add) add-on modules for some popular role-playing games (with a twist - they all had a medieval theme to them!) and was just starting to draft a proposal for some interactive fiction books for a company actually formed by the guy who started the Choose Your Own Adventure concept but left his original company amidst a bitter lawsuit, something about intellectual property I think. Mom was working on an unauthorized biography of Frank Frazetta and they both wanted me to follow in their footsteps. I had other ideas...

I had never used a computer before but I knew that they could be used for a multitude of tasks including accounting and spreadsheet stuff. Now, you have to understand, at the time I was obsessed with spreadsheets. I hadn't actually ever used one but I would bike down to the library some days and sit and read about them for hours. For a while I even affected a (somewhat silly in retrospect) cockney accent and would say things like "Oops, not now lads, must do my sums!" or "Mmmm, I don't like your prospects on that, but let's see it looks like after I do my sums!". When I saw the computer I almost fainted.. here it was, my chance, finally, I was going to use spreadsheets!

Well, you can imagine my disappointment when my parents told me right off the bat "this computer will not be used for any spreadsheets! We must keep it pure, as pure as Erik The Virtuous!". Now, I should explain, my dad's big character he was working on was called Erik The Virtuous and dad got a bit carried away sometimes. I'm not talking anything REALLY overboard, just stuff like setting a place for him at dinner now and then, the odd imaginary conversation with him, that sort of thing. I knew that this was just a part of the creative process but I knew just as well that there was no real arguing with him when purity or Erik the Virtuous was concerned. I supposed I could have asked my mom to step in but she was just always busy working on her van, Purple Haze. So there I was, I had a computer to use but no spreadsheets. I decided to just ignore the machine and stick to my loom, and that's exactly what I did for about a month, until I found the disk.

I was bringing in the mail when I noticed dad's Solider of Fortune was wrapped in a plastic bag this month, with a computer disk inside. As much as I knew how angry he'd get if anyone so much as crimped a corner of his S.O.F. I could stop myself and I ripped open the bag and took out the disk. It was beige and had America Online written on. I actually just stared at it for a few minutes, it was so fresh and crisp looking. After admiring it a while I flushed the plastic bag from the magazine down the toilet to conceal it's existence and put the disk in the computer.

The rest of the summer was a blur. Before I knew it I was online, and I learned quickly that I was missing a lot by only using AOL, so I switched to Compuserve. I would sit for hours silently reading all sorts of fascinating articles that rivaled even the absolute best pieces from Popular Science, my personal bible at the time. I met all sorts of people. Including what was to become my first hacker club.

Yup, 3 months online and I was already in a hacker club, and not just any hacker club: A hacker club with a theme AND a purpose. We were called the Information Superhighwaymen and we were based on the legendary country supergroup the Highwaymen. We fought for the American Farmer, who at the time was seriuously under-represented on the Internet. I was J0hnny Cache and my cohorts had the nicknames Jezuz Kristofferson, Wailin' Jennings and Willie Nelson. It was hard coming up with good puns (computer related or not) based around all those country guys so we got lazy.

We had all the best hacks: We spread several viruses that played the national anthem at high noon every year on the anniversary of Farm-Aid and while covering the user's screen with "No Farmers = No Food!" before allowing them to resume normal operations. We would often completely blanket the vegetarian related Compuserve areas with messages that just read "Meat ain't Murder, go back to Europe ya damn fools! God Bless the American Famer.". We were badasses and we knew it.

Of course the good times had to end. The gang started to crumble when Wailin' started getting into Sabbath and I quit shortly thereafter. I knew from my older brother Jim and mom that when someone got into Sabbath there wasn't much hope for them, especially if they had big headphones and a quiet room to go to and listen to them all day.

The story does have a happy ending though: Once grade nine started that fall I didn't have much time for the computer at home anyway though, I was too busy staying late and using the one at my new high school... complete with the latest spreadsheet program!

***********************************

new eggpost feature: Abstract Ascii Art Corner

*******************************

i'm not saying you should like this. if you do though, go to the signup page and sign up. you'll get maybe 3 or 4 things a week TOPS, probably much less.